MacFixIt Report on drive formatting posted; Drive Setup 1.7.2 glitch reports continue

New MacFixIt Report on drive formatting posted Last week, we noted that "Low level format option for all ATA drives has been disabled" in Drive Setup 1.7.x. This led me to delve into several Apple TIL articles to learn more about Drive Setup's options (Low Level and Zero All Data) and their use with ATA vs. SCSI drives. I also compared the use of the Finder's Erase Disk command vs. Drive Setup. The results are posted in a new MacFixIt Report: Formatting Your Drive: Drive Setup and Erase Disk.

Drive Setup 1.7.2 Meanwhile, we continue to get reports of an odd assortment of problems occurring after updating to Drive Setup 1.7.2. While there is no single problem that is common to these reports, their sheer number suggest that Drive Setup 1.7.2 has some glitches that go beyond what is typical for a driver utility update. Here is one example:

Dewey Maxwell writes: "One day, my Hewlett Packard DeskJet 870CXI would not print. I would get an error message that the 'serial port is open or in use.' I zapped the PRAM, reinstalled the drivers, etc., to no avail. I finally figured out that the only thing new I had done to the machine (8600/250) was update the hard disk driver with Apple Drive Setup 1.7.2. I reinstalled Drive Setup 1.6.2 and the printing problems went away. Weird!"

Update: Denny Doyne reports one positive effect of Drive Setup 1.7.2: "My hard drive would not sleep. It would spin down then spin up and stay spinning. After updating to 1.7.2, it sleeps like a baby."